Chandigarh: Police have arrested seven people in the brutal gang rape and murder of a 28-year-old mentally challenged woman in Rohtak, five days after her body was foundn a field near the highway.

According to the cops, of the 8 arrested, 7 were locals of the area while one of them, a person of Nepal origin, was known to the victim.

The woman’s body was found in an agricultural field near Bahu Akbarpur village on the Rohtak-Hisar highway by villagers Feb 4. The post-mortem report said objects had been thrust into her body. Doctors said the woman was gang-raped before being brutally killed.

The woman’s skull had a fracture and her body parts had been eaten. She had gone missing Feb 1 and a relative had filed a complaint with police in Rohtak. However, police did not register a case.

The woman had come to Rohtak from Nepal a couple of months back for treatment at the Post-Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences (PGIMS) in Rohtak.

Rohtak: A mentally challenged woman was gang-raped and violated with sticks and stones before being killed last week in Rohtak town, 80 km from Delhi.Five days after her naked, half eaten body was found in a field near the highway, the police claim they have arrested, with the help of “human and technical intelligence,” eight men who have allegedly confessed to the crime.The search is on for a ninth man for the savage attack that has spurred comparisons to the 2012 gang-rape and torture of a young medical student in a moving bus.

The 28-year-old woman’s body was found on February 4, gnawed at by animals and with key organs missing; two arms and the left side of the body was gone. The police said objects had been inserted into her; sticks, stones and condoms were stuffed into her private parts.

“I have never seen such a horrific case in 30 years. The injuries suggest she was hit on the head with a heavy object, became partly unconscious and was then gang-raped. Stones were inserted in her before she was dumped,” said SK Dattarwal, who headed the post mortem examination.

The mutilated body was found three days after the woman was reported missing by her sister.

“The police did not take my complaint seriously. They said you keep looking for her…you will find her or maybe she will return. If they had acted promptly, she would have been alive,” the sister said, adding, “We want the killers to be hanged.”

As they confronted public fury, the police prayed for luck in cracking the case.

“We are not lacking in manpower or vehicles. The one thing we are short of is luck. If luck is with us, then we will solve the case,” said Chandigarh police chief Yashpal Singal, who is in Rohtak to oversee the investigations.

The woman had come from Nepal a few months ago and was staying with her sister while being treated at a hospital. The police say one of the arrested men is a Nepali national